Populist leaders hail arrest of Marxist killer after 38 years

Cesare Battisti is a former member of a Marxist terrorist group, convicted for his part in four murdersEPA

A fugitive far-left militant turned novelist who was wanted in Italy for four murders in the 1970s was flying to Rome last night after he was captured on a street in Bolivia wearing dark glasses.

Cesare Battisti, 64, did not try to flee as he was surrounded in the town of Santa Cruz de la Sierra by Bolivian and Italian police who had been watching him for a week.

“He must rot in jail until his last days, he must not get out of prison alive,” Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister, said as Italian intelligence officials arrived in Bolivia to take him back. After Battisti was put on a plane chartered by the Italian government, Mr Salvini tweeted: “The airplane with Battisti has just…

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